


no longer can we meet

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 01:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9525518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Robbie knows things about Jemma, things he can't possibly know.





	

**Author's Note:**

> shineyma prompted “Can we please pretend I never said that?”
> 
> Title from "Nothing More To Look Forward To" by Betty Carter.

Sun’s coming up and Gabe’s still in surgery. Robbie’s fine. One-hundred percent clean bill of health. His gut twisted and his skin burned when Santoro told him that, called him lucky, called it a _miracle_.

It wasn’t.

But Robbie’s not thinking about that or about the voice in his head urging him to go, hunt, _kill_ the men who did this. There’ll be time for that; right now Gabe needs him.

Lucia and Naomi are gabbing at the nurse’s station, smiling and talking like the whole world isn’t falling apart somewhere in this building. Watching them, worry starts to take hold in Robbie, cooling the fire. Sun’s nearly up. They’ve been here for hours, but…

“He’ll be fine,” Eli says for the thousandth time. Robbie can’t hear it, not again. He can’t listen to Eli tell him how strong Gabe is, how he’ll pull through just because. So he lets the worry drive him to his feet.

The nurses go somber when he gets close. They know it’s not looking good and they’re showing a little respect. They’re also just doing their jobs, going about their day; he’s not gonna make it harder by taking his anger out on them. (There are people more deserving of it and he’ll save his wrath for them.)

“I thought Jemma was working the night shift tonight,” he says, leaning his forearms on the counter.

They exchange blank looks and the worry knots tightly. “Who?” Naomi asks.

“Jemma,” Robbie says. “Jemma Simmons, she works in the ER.” And she should’ve been up here by now, should’ve come bursting into the exam room when Santoro was looking him over, should’ve stopped by a dozen times with warm coffee and warm reassurances that Gabe was gonna be fine. He wouldn’t have minded them so much, coming from her.

Thoughts of the attack flit through his mind. What if it wasn’t random? What if those _cabrones_ targeted them specifically? What if they went after her too?

Naomi and Lucia stare at him blankly, like they’ve never even seen him before, and the longer it goes on, the more he starts to wonder why he didn’t wonder sooner. Why’s it only just now he’s worried about his soulmate?

But he already knows. He’s got to because he mutters something about this not being Cedars-Sinai and heads for the nearest bathroom as soon as they give him those pitying looks. He checks every stall before gripping the sink and staring at his reflection, at the thing he knows is hiding behind his own eyes.

“What did you do?” he demands. “Where is she?”

Because she should be _here_. She works in _this_ hospital. She drags him out drinking with _those_ nurses. So why don’t they seem to know him or her?

He feels something, like molten claws dragging at the underside of his collarbone. He stifles a cry of pain and tears at his shirt, ripping the fabric to get a look at what’s happening.

Which turns out to be a whole lot of nothing. No fire, no demonic hand pushing at his skin … and no soul mark.

He doesn’t realize he’s lost his footing until his back hits the stalls. He sold his soul. Soul mark’s gone. And so’s his soulmate.

 

 

 

_four years later..._

 

There’s a beer sitting on the edge of the table, in the middle of a small puddle of condensation. It was cold when it was left at her elbow but it’s gone warm in the interim and all the while Jemma’s been thinking.

Robbie left it. _Mr. Reyes_ , she thinks firmly. She hasn’t slipped when speaking aloud just yet, but inside her mind it takes focused effort to call him anything else. Perhaps that’s because she wondered, for the first half hour after they officially met, whether he might be her soulmate. He wasn’t - as it turns out, he has no words at all, poor thing - but that initial feeling of familiarity, of _I’ve been waiting for you_ is difficult to shake.

He brought her the beer and said something … She didn’t quite catch it - he spoke very quietly, as though fearful of interrupting her when that was his entire aim - but she thinks it might have been about working herself to death.

It would be so easy to shrug it off. Robbie doesn’t know the team very well yet and he’d hardly be the first to grow concerned over the long hours she spends in the lab. Hunter physically carried her to bed in the days after Trip’s death. Even Ward, though it was obviously an artifice, coming from him, used to threaten to pull the fire alarm to get her and Fitz to sleep if ever they went over thirty hours. So it could be nothing so much as concern and she would gladly chalk it up as such, except…

The beer is her favorite brand.

Yesterday, while they were all crowded in Zephyr One’s kitchen, making hoagies after a very long mission, Robbie snatched the tiny jar of sweet hot mustard she prefers and moved it down in front of her before any of the others could finish it off.

And last week, he asked where her necklace was even though she was wearing one. There’s no way he could have known… 

She pushes away from the lab bench, grabbing the beer as she heads for the cargo bay. It’s a section of the plane she tries to avoid while in flight - it’s much easier to hear the roar of the wind and engines, to feel their movement in the subtle vibrations in the floor - but it’s also the most likely location in which to find Robbie.

She’s not disappointed. He’s half-hidden beneath his car while its speakers emit a heavy beat and lyrics she can’t understand. As she nears, the radio crackles and comes to rest on the old timey jazz she prefers. It shouldn’t be able to pick up one station at this altitude, let alone two, and Daisy’s ridiculous “demon car” claim resounds in her head.

She doesn’t believe Robbie _or_ his car are possessed, no matter what he might say, though she does admit that would explain his impossible knowledge regarding her. All the more reason to find out the truth here and now.

He rolls out from beneath the car, asking a question in Spanish, only to cut off when he catches sight of her above him. “Hi,” he says, then all at once scrambles to his feet. “Uh, did you need something?”

She holds out the beer. “How did you know?”

He grabs a rag off the hood and wanders to the tool bench several feet away. He’s pretending to hunt for whatever he needs, but they both know he’s hiding from her. “Know what?”

“It’s my favorite brand.”

He shoots her a look that lingers a moment too long. “It was what was in the fridge.”

“No,” she says. She knows her team, knows what they prefer. If her brand was in Zephyr One’s stores, there would only have been a six-pack and that brought by Coulson in hopes she might come along for a mission at some point. It wouldn’t have been in the fridge or, if it was, there would have been only one or two now that she’s on board.

“Then where did I get it?” He gives her a weak, somewhat teasing smile as he heads back to the car, this time popping the hood to look inside. Hiding again.

She comes around to stand over him again. “You know things,” she says, “about me. Things you couldn’t possibly know. I want to know how.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do,” she insists. “Your bloody car plays my favorite kind of music whenever I’m around, you pick out my favorite condiments for me, you know about my necklace.”

He hisses in a breath while he straightens, resting his hands heavily on the front of the car. “I never should’ve mentioned your grandmother. Can we just pretend I never said that?”

She stares at him until he meets her eyes. “I never said anything about it being my grandmother’s necklace.” She wore it every day since her grandmother’s death, only removing it for undercover assignments and when she left it as a sign for Fitz. She felt naked without it in the months after her return; and until recently it seemed a fitting sensation after all she’d lost.

His focus drop to the chain she wears now. She remains frozen while he lifts one filthy hand to pick up the tiny golden star she’s taken to wearing lately in memory of Will. “What happened to it?” he asks, his voice strangely rough.

“I lost it. On an alien world.”

His jaw tightens and for half a second, so quick she can almost believe it was her imagination, she sees fire in his eyes. But then it’s gone and his tone is only sympathetic. “I’m sorry. I know-” He drops the pendant and looks away.

“You know _what_?” she presses. “What more do you know about me that makes no sense at all?”

“Jem,” he says softly, pleadingly. Her heart constricts. The nickname doesn’t sound strange coming from a practical stranger; it sounds right, the same as his given name sounds in her head.

“How do you know these things?” she demands. “Tell me! I have a right to know!”

He slams the hood down, making her jump. His fists rest heavily against it while a melodious tune pours from the speakers. “‘It’s just a scratch, take care of him,’” he says tightly.

Jemma’s hand flies to her shoulder as if to protect what’s hidden beneath her shirt. Those are the first words he spoke to her and they’re on her back, just to the left of her T3 and T4 vertebrae.

“The M,” he goes on, “it sticks out past the first line, I used to like the way you’d shiver when I ran a finger down your spine and I’d just barely brush the edge of it on the way down.”

A shiver goes through her now, but it’s not at all a pleasant one. “What are you-?”

He faces her with a smile that isn’t a smile at all. “‘Take off your shirt, let me see.’” He taps his collarbone on the left side. “I always thought I’d have a better follow-up to that. Twice now it’s been that same thing.”

“Twice?” She’s struggling to make sense of what he’s saying. She’s usually far faster on the uptake than this but none of the conclusions she’s drawing make any sense.

“All that stuff I know about you? It’s stuff I know about my soulmate. Or knew.” He looks through the windshield of the car as though he can see someone sitting there. “After the accident, Gabe was treated at her hospital. She was a nurse. Only none of the other nurses recognized me or knew her name.” He lets out a breath that might be a laugh. “I’d been to Naomi’s birthday party three days earlier but she looked right through me.”

Every line of him is practically screaming, begging for comfort, but even though Jemma lifts a hand, she can’t make herself lay it on his shoulder.

“Once Gabe was stable, I went by her apartment. Place looked like it hadn’t been lived in for months and there was some tweaker passed out in one of the closets. It was like she’d never existed.”

Jemma breathes deep, trying to keep steady as his words sink in. “You’re- you’re saying that you think I’m your soulmate?”

He looks at her. His eyes drag over her face and for some reason that causes the breath she’s trying to get under control to catch in her throat. He moves closer, his hand comes up … and then drops. “No. No, I don’t have a soulmate anymore.”

He walks away, leaving her feeling cold with only the hum of the plane and Betty Carter’s sorrowful voice to keep her company.

 


End file.
